Mozilla takes back the office with Firework
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Sep 15 2008 - The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit public benefit software development organization, is pleased to announce Firework, its upcoming office suite. Firework makes documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and like existing successful Mozilla products such as the award-winning Firefox and Thunderbird, will support open standards, ease of use, and innovation.
Mozilla Foundation President Mitchell Baker explains: “The Foundation’s aim is preserve choice and promote innovation on the internet. We’re winning delivering that for the web - there could be no better use of the Mozilla Foundation’s resources than to free the office next. Firework’s aim is simple: to take back the office from expensive, slow, proprietary software with a great, easy and free office suite. ”
New Collaboration Model
One of Firework’s principle differences from existing office suites is its collaboration model. Baker continues: “currently, people who work on documents together usually do so by email, sending each new version to with notes. Fireworks can let people instantly work on the latest version of document without having to manually transfer anything, including discussing changes while they work.”
Sooner, Rather than Later
The Mozilla office project has been in private discussion for a number of months, and initial test releases should be made available to the public shortly. Baker continues: “In much the same way Mozilla Firefox was built from the old Mozilla suite, we are leveraging existing open source office products to create Firework. This means you can expect Firework sooner, rather than later ”
The suite will support all common formats including all versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, PDF, and the OpenDocument standard, which the suite will use as the default for new documents.
Preview versions of the Mozilla office suite will be available from Mozilla in the next few weeks, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The final suite is currently expected for Q2 2009.
For more information, visit www.mozilla.com where Frequently Asked Questions and links to blogs about this announcement are posted.
About the Mozilla Foundation
Established in July 2003, the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote choice and innovation on the Internet. The Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open source software project. It coordinates a range of contributors, including the activities of its wholly owned subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation is based in Mountain View, California. Learn more about the Mozilla Foundation at http://www.mozilla.org.
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Important Note:
This article is entirely fabricated. There is no Mozilla office suite. Nobody quoted said any of these things.
The above is an idea for the Mozilla Lab’s Concept Series. And it’s just an idea - sorry, no code yet. The current state of office suites is like the web browser market in the early 2000s - we need a Firefox to come along and shake things up . Mozilla indeed has a word of experience in making software that’s not only standard compliant, but simple and innovative. They can do it on any platform, with a native look. They have a track record of delivering software to mainstream desktops. The Mozilla Foundation is in an excellent financial position due to strong earnings from search. Creating an office suite is perfectly within the Foundation’s mission.
So how about it guys?
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September 10th, 2008 00:31
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October 27th, 2008 19:58
Mozilla tends to produce truly fantastic software; therefore, I do not consider this a terrible idea. However, I do not like the idea because there is all ready a full featured open source office suite: Open Office. In my experience it can do everything Microsoft Office can do and sometimes better than Microsoft Office except for its outdated appearance (Better with Open Office 3) and lack of a grammar checker (A grammar checker is planned/in the works).
Other than the two shortfalls listed above, my only qualm with Open Office is its bloat. The program needs to be slimmed down and sped up. It would even be nice if it could be taken off of the crutch of Java.
Mozilla tends to be completely capable of staffing its own source writers and getting things done quickly and producing very speedy programs, but I do not see this as warranting a new office suite. If Mozilla has interest in office suites then it would do best to offer some work on Open Office. Everyone could be happy with that in the end.
If Mozilla were to start a new office suite it would not do much more than compete with Open Office for a user base (At least at first). This would hurt the chances of both Open Office and Mozilla “Firework” from surviving and competing with the big dogs like Microsoft Office. Fragmentation is certainly something that the open source community does not need or want. Many open source projects are all ready finding it hard to get enough coders interesting in putting gratis time into source writing.